It is very important in assessing the moral and ethical quality of people’s lives, outside Christ, to discriminate sharply between our human assessment and God’s assessment. Knowing that all people have been created in God’s image and knowing that this image, while seriously damaged, has not been erased, we are not surprised to find even outstanding expressions of nobility in the lives of those who do not know Christ and in whom the fruit-producing Spirit does not indwell. Yet while we may be impressed by such examples we must appreciate that God, in his perfect holiness, views matters very differently.
In The Bondage of the Will Luther is at pains to try to get this point across. He criticizes his critics for the examples they appeal to in arguing that some people are conspicuous for the meritorious good they do. Luther notes all their examples concern an external display of works and asks his critics, “For did you ever see their hearts?” (293). Luther contends that all people, the Romans, Greeks, Jews and all the race of men, “did whatever they did of virtue or valour, from a thirst after [their own] glory” (293).
In a major statement Luther observes,
But though this be meritoriously good before men, yet, before God, nothing is less meritoriously good than all this; nay, it is most impious, and the greatest of sacrilege; because, they did it not for the glory of God, nor that they might glorify God, but with the most impious of all robbery. For as they were robbing God of His glory and taking it to themselves, they never were farther from meritorious good, never more base, than when they were shining in their most exalted virtues (293-294).
Luther persists in drawing a sharp distinction between “flesh” and “spirit” insisting that in God’s sight all that which is deemed meritoriously virtuous and good in man’s sight is “flesh” and subservient to Satan’s kingdom: “that is, ungodly, sacrilegious, and, in every respect, evil!” (295).
Luther reasons that if this “meritoriously virtuous” aspect of man was to be deemed not ungodly then an absurd conclusion follows:
Shall we rate the price of His [Christ’s] blood so low as to say, that it redeemed that part of man only which is the most vile, and that the most excellent part of man has power to work its own salvation, and does not want Christ? Henceforth then, I must preach Christ as the Redeemer, not of the whole man, but of his vilest part; that is, of his flesh [as redefined by Erasmus]; but that the man himself is his own redeemer, in his better part!” (296).
All of this is an expression of the doctrine of total depravity. This does not mean people are totally and completely evil, but that sin infects every aspect of our lives. All our thoughts, words and actions, however truly noble and good they may be from a human perspective, are tainted and therefore unacceptable to a perfectly holy God. Only the blood of Christ can wash us clean and redeem us. As Luther points out, this cleansing is thoroughgoing. It is not just a part of us that needs cleaning but our whole persons.
Posted July 29, 2008
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